1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to cluster management of a carrier-grade high availability platform, and more particularly, to a management system and method for managing, maintaining, and using cluster membership data.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
High availability computer systems provide basic and real-time computing services. In order to provide highly available services, members of the system must be aware or capable of being aware of the viability and accessibility of services and hardware components in real-time.
Computer networks allow data and services to be distributed among computer systems. A clustered network provides a network with system services, applications and hardware divided into nodes that can join or leave a cluster as is necessary. A clustered high availability computer system must maintain cluster information in order to provide services in real-time. Generally this creates a large overhead and commitment of system resources ultimately slowing system response. System costs are also increased by the need for additional memory and storage space for the applications used to monitor system viability.